Diane Von Furstenberg Would ‘Like to Sell Every Chinese a T-Shirt’

Diane Von Furstenberg’s 2010 New Year’s resolution was “to get known in China,” she tells the New York Times. As we learned last spring, she believes the Chinese will soon buy their products from us instead of vice versa: “I mean, this China thing — I think it’s going to happen, like, tomorrow morning,” she said.

The Times reports today on DVF’s recent visit to Beijing:

“First of all, I love China,” she said while nibbling on a pizza during lunch at a boutique hotel here called Yi House. “I came for the first time in 1990. And I’ve always had this fantasy. I’d like to sell every Chinese a T-shirt.”

True to her word, she’s opened two stores in China and is about to throw a huge party in Beijing to celebrate a retrospective exhibit about herself, titled “Journey of a Dress,” which will travel to the city in April. To give the show a “local flavor,” she’s arranged for a group of the country’s leading artists to do portraits of her. And finally, she’s having her 1998 autobiography, Diane: A Signature Life, translated into Chinese by Hong Huang, whom the Times describes as “China’s Oprah” and “a close friend” of DVF’s. Which, if China’s Oprah is anywhere near as powerful as America’s Oprah, is undoubtedly the most important part of all of this.